Carnacon confirm appeal against fines and suspensions

The saga in Mayo Ladies football will rumble on for another week at least after confirmation from Carnacon that they will fight the sanctions handed down to them by the Connacht Council.

The Mayo county board punished the club for bringing the game into disrepute but a number of the imposed sanctions were revoked on appeal, including the club’s expulsion from League and Championship.

The well publicised row centers on the decision of eight players to walk away from the county panel before the All Ireland qualifier clash with Cavan after citing player welfare issues and describing the team environment as “unsafe” and “unhealthy”.

That expulsion was successfully appealed but on Tuesday night the club was slapped with a fine of €500 and the eight players behind what the county board described as a “failed coup” were subsequently banned for four weeks.

The players in question are Martha Carter, Marie Corbett, Amy Dowling, Doirean Hughes, Sadbh Larkin, Fiona Mc Hale, Cora Staunton and Saoirse Walsh. The appeal will be formally made this afternoon. The fall-out has been bitter and ugly with both sides contradicting each other.

In a lengthy press conference, the manager Peter Leahy was portrayed as an authoritarian who intimidated some of the players including the captain Sarah Tierney who described a conversation with Leahy thusly: “I can only describe it as I've never felt so intimidated in my entire life.

"He told me I was getting absolutely roasted at training, that I was performing absolutely shite, that the reason I was distracted the previous night at training was because I was so caught up with going to him with this suggestion of bringing this guest player in.

"He was doing this action 'you're listening to the others, you're listening to the others' and I was standing back. He was getting visibly aggressive with me at this stage.

Leahy disputed much of what has been said by the players who left the panel and suggested their gripes were centered on non selection and hurt feelings.

He told the 42.ie earlier this week: “It must come to an end now, as far as the ‘he-said-she-said’ statements and interviews are concerned anyway.

“As far as I’m concerned, this is over. All sides have had their say and all that is happening now is we’re giving the public the right to make insulting comments on social media which are hurting a lot of people.

"It’s even going as far as affecting people’s mental health, it appears, so I’m asking for people to lay off comments to players.”

The row though is not over yet as the players fight for the right to play for their club by appealing the month long suspensions that came into force on September 18th.